I always think that I need to step it up at Xmas time instead of be laxer. Even if I'm not totally successful it keeps me from going berserk with all the cookies and junk around me. I've heard that sucking on candy canes can help because they take a while to consume and are pretty low in calories (40 for plain kinds). I had a few bad days this week but before that did well even at Thanksgiving at my parents where I usually gain a couple pounds.
Oh and I told Chris I was thinking of making my limit for the last3 weeks before xmas 1200 insted of 1300. His response was that he thought 1300 cal was already very low and that instead I should try to run longer and faster to burn more calories. What do you think? I was thinking of trying both! :)
And I was originally going to try to aim for the 130 lbs mark. But I'm looking at my post-3-babies-belly and wondering if that is low enough. I've always thought I could never get down to 120 or 125 but I was thinking I would try. I'm losing weight everywhere else- butt, hips, back, legs (and unfortunately boobs). My stomach is smaller but I seem to hold the extra weight there. I do crunches but nothing real serious. What do you think Josh? Will more stomach exercises help or am I just shaped that way?
11/25-1357
11/26- 1407
11/27- splurge Tgiving day
11/28- around 1300
11/29- around 1300
11/30- 1400ish- traveling in the car always makes me snacky
12/1- 1305
12/2- 1327
12/3- 1300
12/4- missing, I'm pretty sure I went over this day probably by 200 cals
12/5- splurge day (which I shouldn't have done based ont he day before)
12/6- 1522 sigh- I dont' know what got into me; I blame my period :(
12/7- I thought I was right at 1200 but I forgot to write down dinner stuff
Sothe 1200 thing didn't go that well for teh first few days. But yesterday i was on track and I'm trying again today. The problem witht he more running thing is that I think Chris underestimates how difficult it is to find more time to run!
I am down 11 lbs since mid Oct.! If it weren't for my eating this weekend I think I'd be down 12 lbs already!
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I'm stepping it up too. I haven't been above 180 in a couple years, and I was inching toward that with the "drop weight after the holidays" mindset. So that's out, and I'm aiming to drop weight during the holidays. Very challenging while living here at the Kogok's.
Dropping 100 calories will help you lose an extra pound a month, which isn't much. And it can make you eat 600 calories more each binge day to compensate, or worse could make you enough hungrier to binge more often, so you'd actually eat more calories instead of less. Plus restricting calories usually leads to muscle loss, and every hundred lower freaks out your body that much more.
Having said all that, you could test it out, as everyone can handle a different number of cals.
I recommend finding time to do five hours of exercise per week. But if you can't, do as much as you can.
Running more will help you lose weight, sure. But then your body will adapt to that and you'll have to run longer. The longer. Then you'll add a soccer, and your body will adapt to that. Steady state cardio is merely better tha nothing. You're ready to move up.
Running faster will really help, especially if your body isn't used to serious challenges. Run fast and you burn twice the total calories during exercise, to say nothing of afterward. What about fat calories, you say? Run fast and you burn more fat calories, when you include the post-workout burn.
But "fast" means intervals of sprinting and walking for twenty minutes.
And even that will probably strip away some of your muscle, when supported by a mere 1300 cals. You're better off doing intervals of weight training. Like buy a pullup bar or find some way to do jumping pullups; do pushups on an elevated surface (or less good, pushups from knees); and air squats (with no weight). Then do 10 of each exercise three times, then jog ten minutes, then three more times.
Every year you're not doing resistance training, subtract .5 - 1 pound from your "ideal" weight. You've lost that much muscle, so you have a new ideal. Unless you want to end up looking like Mom and Dad and Marilyn and John and every other obese surburbanite 50-something, you need to challenge your muscles with resistance, or drop your ideal weight. (Well, we may have drugs to replace all this training by the time we're that age.)
Your shape is partly genetic, partly habit. To get a lean stomach, people with our genes would probably have to restrict carbs to 100 g per day (that's about a bowl of cereal), eat lots of fat and protein, and pick a specific exercise regimen. I'm going to experiment with this in the new year.
"Ab" exercises and "stomach" exercises do little to nothing to drop weight from that area. It's all the fat in top and the hormonal balance deciding where to store fat.
Thanks for the thorough answer. Very helpful.
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